Elegy for Seretta
by DezoPenguin
Summary: They called her a saint. They traveled the world to save her. In the end, though, she was but a sinner, forever lost.


They called her a saint.

Her soul had had such strength, such fire to it. The miraculous rites came so easily to her. She'd stood out among the other novices as the sun shines in the sky, utterly blotting out the light of the moon and stars as if they weren't there at all.

She'd stood alongside the knights of Eleum Loyce in their battles against the spawn of Old Chaos. Sunlight and fire had leapt from her fingers, striking down the most hideous of beasts. And when they lay, broken and quivering upon the point of death, she poured forth the radiance of her soul and brought them back, bathed them in shining light.

That she would be the next heir to the priestess's throne went without saying. They said that no one since Vasnya, she who had been the original High Priestess and founded the cathedral at the Ivory King's side, had had a soul so bright, so powerful an affinity for the miraculous light. Indeed, some claimed that even Vasnya had not shone with such a soul.

So when High Priestess Naran died, they passed over the elders, the senior priestesses, and plucked the newly ordained girl from her novice's robes, and she cut her eye from her skull and set in its place Vasnya's eye, that jewel which rendered the unseen visible, and allowed her to shape the currents of power that were the barrier on Old Chaos.

And with the great force of her soul, she found it easy to guide the Ivory King's power how it would do the most good, to strengthen the barriers and push back the flame, so that in the latter days fewer and fewer beasts could find their way free of the old flame, the ancient corruption, and the people praised her as a saint once more.

Until the curse came.

Silent, it had descended upon Eleum Loyce. It preyed upon the high and the low, the Darksign rooting itself in the flesh of peasant and artisan, soldier and knight, priestess and sage…and saint.

Cold and remorseless it came, like a wound in her flesh seeping Dark, that plague that had returned to humanity again and again throughout the ages.

And when it was revealed that she, their saint, had become afflicted, did the people rise up in desperation. Though those near to becoming Hollow were exiled from the city before they turned on those nearest them in their hunger for souls, for their saint they could not accept such a fate. Knights cried out her name, begged to be sent forth in quest, vowed that they would find a cure for her Undeath.

She could not even remember their faces.

She remembered the tears streaming from their eyes, these young men and woman so moved by their saint's affliction, but she could not remember their faces. Nor could she remember their names. The details of their wayfaring armor slipped from her like a sculpted candle melting into a shapeless pool.

How far had they roamed? Were they well or ill? What had they found, in the far corners of the world? Had they found how the curse could be pushed back? How past lands had done so, and the ages turn forever on?

If they had, she did not know. She knew not what had become of them, if they had ever returned to Eleum Loyce, or indeed if Eleum Loyce itself still stood.

She knew only that they had not returned in time.

That they had not returned before the memories slipped from her mind like water, like the tears that dripped with each day the fog grew within her.

Had she had parents once? Or been an orphan left on the gates of the cathedral like a storybook child?

Had she had friends growing up, dear companions to stand side-by-side with? Or had she been scorned for her talents, shunned for the power of her soul that called out for greater things, been worshipped, feared, or envied but never _loved_?

She did not know, for it was gone.

And she could not bear its going, each trickle of emptiness within her mind like a droplet of water falling on her forehead, a fresh torment.

Until the whispers in her soul had spoken to her, _flame, flame, only flame can purge the curse._

To burn it away, to kindle the holy fire.

Only all that had come had been ruin. The embers she called were of Chaos, roaring back to life at the behest of her immense soul, a soul that could have been as great as the Ivory King's itself. New life, new corrupting fire born fresh, a mockery of the purity of flame.

She did not know if Eleum Loyce still stood. She knew that they had found her, seized her, desperately sealed the gates, even as death had reached from them, new horrors springing forth. That her priestess's eye had been wrested from her, shackles clamped on her wrists, a barbed mask clamped over her face. Hurled into exile, not even granted the mercy of a quick end at the fangs of the King's beasts.

For there were some sins for which there could be no respite, not until that great soul was needed. A saintly sinner's soul, to be claimed again by a monarch who would take the final throne, the newest heir to the First Sin.

And then, perhaps, would she be allowed to be but a legend, in the end.

~X X X~

_A/N: The theory that the Lost Sinner was once the High Priestess of Eleum Loyce is not original with me; I first encountered it on Reddit and I have seen it elsewhere. The evidence is relatively thin: basically, the fact that Eleum Loyce once sealed away the Chaos Flame, and the Sinner possesses the Old Witch Soul, since the Chaos Flame was originally created by the Witch of Izalith's attempt to duplicate the First Flame. Counting against this is that Shalquoir states that the Sinner tried to light the First Flame, not the Chaos Flame, but given that the Chaos Flame was, as stated, begun to duplicate the First Flame, that statement can at least be massaged. (Noteworthy, Shalquoir uses the verb "light" and not "link" with regards to the Flame, which hints at an attempt to duplicate the Witch's sin.)_

_The identification of the Sinner with Saint Serreta, of the Alva story, is purely speculative on my behalf and is my own contribution to the myth. The idea that Seretta's affliction was the Undead Curse certainly would explain why Alva would search far and wide for its answers, and why he might in the end find himself at the Ringed City, but it's purely a fun narrative, with no firm evidence at all._


End file.
